Category: DVD/Blu-ray releases

Distributor Revolver Entertainment have uploaded the UK trailer for Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai to their YouTube channel in preparation for its upcoming theatrical release on May 4th and DVD/Blu-ray release on May 7th.

The film is a remake of a classic 1962 film by Masaki Kobayashi which starred Tatsuya Nakadai. It was notable for its subversive theme, depicting what amounted to a scathing indictment of the samurai code which was typically glorified in Japanese films of the era.

Set in the 17th century, the remake stars kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa as a destitute samurai named Hanshiro Tsukumo who asks to commit seppuku at the compound of a feudal lord named Kageyu (Koji Yakusho). Assuming Hanshiro is simply another dishonorable ronin who’s arrived with the bluff of seppuku in order to get a handout, Kageyu tells the story of a young ronin named Motome (Eita) who recently arrived under similar circumstances, leading to his brutal and painful end. Instead of accepting the obvious warning, Hanshiro insists on telling his own story—one that’s destined to end with vengeance and bloodshed.

For all the hand-wringing amongst J-film fans over the recent 3D conversion of Kinji Fukasaku’s smash hit 2000 film Battle Royale for its 10th anniversary, there was always one silver lining from a business angle—it gave distributor Toei a perfectly valid excuse to showcase one of their most successful films ever for international buyers.

Unsurprisingly, the revamped film got plenty of bites at this year’s American Film Market, drawing the attention of over 50 distributors from 13 countries. Most notably, a US distributor bought up the American rights to the film. Editor’s note (11/14): At Toei’s request, I’ve removed the name of the mentioned distributor from this article. It’s not officially announced yet and several Japanese news outlets got the name from a third party that may not be accurate.

This is a long time coming; Battle Royale was never picked up for North American distribution when it was first up for grabs nearly a decade ago. Although interest in Japanese films was surging upward at the time due to the cult success of the J-horror wave, there was simply no appetite for a movie about high school gun violence that soon after the Columbine massacre (see comments for dissenting opinion on this).

Parental groups and politicians misguidedly pegged the events of Columbine on everything from the 1993 video game Doom to the 1994 movie “Natural Born Killers”, but times have changed pretty drastically since then. With national attention focused squarely on the economy and every teenager in America now busy headshotting Viet Cong in Call of Duty: Black Ops, there’s very little backlash against violent entertainment as of late.

Fukasaku died very early on in the filming of the 2003 film “Battle Royale II”, but his son Kenta took over the direction and had a big hand in the 3D adaptation of his father’s work as well as its subsequent promotion. According to Kenta Fukasaku, having the film shown in America finally fulfills a genuine wish of his father after a 10-year delay, and will give many more people the opportunity to watch it.

Somewhat less importantly, Toei claims the sale marks their biggest financial deal for a film in the US to date.

“Battle Royale 3D” will be released in Japan on November 20, 2010. There are plans to release it in the US sometime in 2011, though details are not yet finalized. 3D-haters and film purists shouldn’t fret though; the company in question also picked up the rights for the original non-3D version and its widely-panned sequel, so it’s probably safe to expect a packaged, multi-version release of some sort. Stay Tuned.

Source: Cinema Today via Tokyograph

Good news all around for fans of director Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls, Memories of Matsuko). Today, Subway Cinema kicked off a week-long batch of lineup announcements for the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival by revealing the three special presentation films. The opening and closing films are Wilson Yip's "Ip Man 2" and Joon-ik Lee's "Blades of Blood', respectively. The centerpiece presentation of the festival will be Nakashima's Confessions, which was recently screened for buyers at the Cannes market.

This comes on the heels of the announcement that UK label Third Window Films picked up Confessions for a theatrical run in September/October with a DVD and Blu-ray release planned for early next year.

The film stars Takako Matsu (K-20) as a middle school teacher who goes to extraordinary lengths to take revenge on the students she believes are responsible for the death of her four-year-old daughter.

The Japanese release is set for June 5th in Japan, so the New York screening will mark the official international premiere.

Full trailer for Shuichi Okita’s The Chef of South Polar (Nankyoku Ryōrinin).

The film is based on two autobiographical novels by Jun Nishimura and centers around a research expedition living in Dome Fuji Station near the South Pole. The area, which is located far from Showa Station, has an average temperature of -54 degrees celcius and is situated 3800 meters above sea level. A cook named Nishimura (Masato Sakai) leaves his family behind in order to assist the expedition. Out in the middle of nowhere, Nishimura manages to cook extravagant meals consisting of high-class ingredients like foie gras, spiny lobster, and Matsuzaka beef in this true story of wintering party male bonding.

Distributor Tokyo Theatres Co., Inc. will be releasing “The Chef of South Polar” at Theatre Shinjuku on August 8, 2009 with a subsequent national road show beginning on August 22nd.

Source: Yahoo! Japan Movies